Only Batman Can be Batman
by alice chess
Summary: MAJOR SPOILER WARNING! This is both a critical review of the treatment of Bruce Wayne inside Christopher Nolan's new sequel, "The Dark Knight Rises," & an *attempted* rewrite of the story itself. If you have not seen the film yet, why are you reading fanfiction? GO SEE IT! And then you can read this. Beware: spoilers in here.
1. Part I

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

WARNING!

WARNING!

WARNING!

WARNING!

If you haven't seen _The Dark Knight Rises_, then by all means, **DON'T READ THIS!**

There are **major spoilers** in here!

THE WHOLE THING IS A **SPOILER**!

You have been warned! Don't complain, now!

If you have an opinion on this piece, by all means, please message or review me. I might eventually take this down, or post it to the forums, but it still is something for everyone to think about. I would like to start a dialogue about my topic here, if possible.

With all this said, the review is below.

Again, and for the last time: **BEWARE THE SPOILERS!** You have been warned.

.

.

.

Disclaimer:

I don't own _The Dark Knight Rises_. I make no money, though I have paid and probably will pay to see the movie again. Despite my qualms here, I do VERY MUCH recommend the movie: you will not regret going to see it! I sure don't.

Author's Note (19 July 2012):

Not sure if anyone on this site remembers me: after all, I've been gone for around a year now. I was one of the first writers to start on the _Dark Knight_ section here on ffnet, and I was also the first writer (to my knowledge) to write a "Bruce Wayne gets kidnapped by the Joker" story in the Nolanverse. My story wasn't slash, and sadly it remains probably one of the few. Given that my reaction to TDKR was so strong, I'm considering starting Foundations up again. I'm weighing my options; my job is really involved and takes a lot out of me. I mean, I get up at 5:30 am each day: so I think I have a good excuse why I haven't been writing, as much as that pains me to say.

I write this to everyone from South Korea: I just saw the movie today, and this means I have seen it probably a good 10 hours before the people of the USA have. Therefore, know that my thoughts on this are entirely fresh and new. However, given my strong reaction to TDKR, I think perhaps other people might share the same point of view—or, at least, have a good argument against mine. I welcome all points of view on this topic. Have a nice day!

After posting this, someone in a PM suggested turning this into a story. Therefore I have added the beginnings of the story to the bottom of this, and will probably add on at least one more chapter tomorrow. I need to see the movie again before making any definite plans. Therefore, I will have the review first, and the story second. Let me know how you like both, and depending on what you want, I'll continue or not.

So, here we go...

.

.

.

**ONLY THE BATMAN IS BATMAN: WHY I MUST DISAGREE WITH NOLAN**

Christopher Nolan, my all-time favorite director, is well known for creating puzzles and playing mind games with his audience. His movies are all well written, tightly plotted, and masterfully executed—and, if there is ever anything to complain about, it is always that he has put "too much" into his movies, rather than the "too little" that so often characterizes Hollywood blockbusters these days. In terms of giving people a movie to think about, he is truly the master of our age.

Therefore, before getting into the meat of my subject, I wish to proclaim the following quite loudly: my issue is not with the directing, the casting, or the acting. It is not even with the writing or dialogue. Everything about this movie is superb. I am glad I saw it, and I will probably see it again. And, if the movie were about anything but Batman, I would have no reason to write this article.

But it is about Batman. And that's the problem.

I think, in retrospect, Nolan here has actually bitten off more than he can chew: not because the story is flawed or because the movie is in some way faulty, but because, in order to tell the story he wants to tell, he has acted as if he was creating in a vacuum. As a result of this, he has done what so many other Hollywood directors and producers have done to so many other comics and books that have been translated to the screen. He has given us something named "Batman"—and he has given the longtime fans a number of important references and nods to the comics—but, in the end, he has removed the soul from the work. In essence, he has treated the wider Batman Mythos poorly. This is not a movie about Batman. It is about a creation of Nolan's, which just so happens to share the same name and costume as Batman.

Here's why: Nolan makes the argument that anybody can be Batman. Not just Bruce Wayne. _Anyone_. You, me, and a city cop named Robin. All of us: we can all be Batman.

On a surface level, this argument sounds wonderful. It certainly holds the potential to be inspiring, and given the current climate of the United States, especially economically, anything inspiring deserves a round of applause. But there is a serious problem in this argument. In the pages of the comics, the Batman writers recently came up against the same quandary: could someone else, besides the individual born as Bruce Wayne, become the Batman? It is telling that the comics reached the exact opposite conclusion from Nolan: namely, that _No_, nobody but Bruce Wayne can be Batman. Because Batman is unique.

Let's back up a bit.

In May of 1939, a writer named Bob Kane was working for a simple comic book series, "Detective Comics." Almost one year before, June of 1938, the first Superman comic had been released, and had enjoyed wide popularity: therefore, costumed heroes were the latest fashion. Kane, under orders from his editor, decided to create a masked superhero for the newest addition to his series, "Detective Comics #27." This would be a new kind of superhero, however: all of the others were thinly veiled clones of Superman, possessing super powers and special hidden identities. They tossed men through the air and jumped buildings in a single bound. But Kane's creation, in keeping with the theme of "Detective Comics," would not be an alien or magical being. Kane would create a super detective: a man whose power was in his mind, as well as his muscles. Most importantly, Kane would create a hero who was just like his readers: a human being. This was an inspiring thing. After all, it is one thing if a super alien can fight the bad guys—and quite another if a normal person is doing the same.

Now, fast forward. Today, DC Comics owns the rights to both Superman and Batman. These two characters, along with the character of Wonder Woman, form the three members of DC's "Trinity," the members of which vaguely resemble the religious reference that their title implies. Superman is God the Father: he is practically an all-powerful, otherworldly being who nonetheless has compassion for us human ants. Batman is therefore like Jesus the God-Man: he is also a hero, also capable of incredible and amazing things, but nonetheless is somehow still human. Wonder Woman, having only the vaguest ties to the Holy Spirit, fulfills the role of being a token female on the team and rounds the team's number out to three, a more comfortable number than two. Together these are the "big three," the most important of Earth's heroes in all of DC.

There are other heroes in DC Comics, of course. Some of them have even found their way onto the big screen, including Green Lantern. Others have not yet entered the cinema, including Flash, Captain Marvel, Blue Beetle, and so forth. However, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman all share something that these heroes often do not: they have no "legacy heroes."

The term "legacy hero" refers to a second character that is created to fulfill the heroic role that the first character can no longer fill. For example, there is more than one Green Lantern: Guy Gardener, Hal Jordan, Kyle Rainer, Alan Scott, and John Stewart are all Green Lanterns. They come from different backgrounds and have different personalities, but they all share the same basic powers and therefore the same title: "Green Lantern." In a similar way, there is more than one Flash. And more than one Blue Beetle. There are other examples, of course, but you get the point.

The point is not that Superman, Batman, & Wonder Woman are the only characters with no legacy heroes. The point is that they are the three characters who must NEVER have legacy heroes, because they are something unique. Having more than one Flash means that the title "Flash" is no longer as special. Ditto for Green Lantern. And, given how important the DC Trinity is inside the DC universe, diluting their importance with a legacy hero would be a bad call.

It is important to quickly note, here, that having a legacy hero is different from having a sidekick. Sidekicks come and go: they are popular in their own right, but they are never the main selling point of a comic family. Batman has had five Robins, three Batgirls, and other sidekicks besides. Robin is not the same thing as Batman: and this is evidenced by the fact that when the Robins each "grow up," they do not become Batman II, Batman III, and so forth. They take on their own code names: the first Robin, Dick Grayson, became Nightwing; the second, Jason Todd, became the Red Hood; the third, Tim Drake, became Red Robin. These characters are popular, but they always will be second to the main hero of the Bat Family, Batman.

This difference between a sidekick and a legacy character holds true even when the sidekick temporarily assumes the role of the main hero, as Dick Grayson did by temporarily becoming Batman. Even though there were two Batmen for a while, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, eventually Dick returned to being Nightwing. Therefore a sidekick is of no real impact to a hero's lasting image: the evidence for this remains clear in the comics, where despite having been gone for years, Bruce Wayne is now the sole man behind the Batman cowl, the sole man holding the title "Batman" in the DC Universe. Even though DC has attempted to "farm out" the Batman legacy by creating a group of heroes who work with Batman under the title Batman Incorporated, these heroes are also not "legacy heroes," because they have different titles. Nobody is Batman in the comics, but Batman.

Now that that's out the way, let's show an example of how a legacy character can damage a hero.

Superman is a character who is generally safe from having a legacy hero. Being one of the last of his kind, the Kryptonians, makes it rather hard for DC Comics to replace him. But, let us suppose, for a moment, that they do indeed decide to do just that. They will kill off, irreparably maim, or otherwise get rid of Clark Kent, in order to introduce a second hero. A second Superman!

But that Superman would not be the real Superman.

Because the real Superman _is_ Clark Kent. Superman is more than the red cape, tight outer underwear and emblazoned "S." He is also the alien baby from a dying world, who was sent to Earth by his desperate parents. A farming couple picked him up in their field, and raised him with the good-old country style of living, the old-timey morals of which he carries with him into the dangerous and wild big city, as he works his job as a newspaper writer. Clark Kent is a real softie, the moral center of Superman. He bumbles his way through life, always trying to help in whatever way he can and smile at anyone who is having a bad day. He won't ask Lois Lane out for a date, because he is just too shy about it. Even though he is capable of flying right into the heart of the sun, he is still somehow a sweethearted country boy who is just trying to make his way in the wide world.

A legacy character, Superman II, would not and could not have the same background story. And even if he did, he would be only a copycat character, and a copycat is never as good as the original. That's why copycats copy: because they can't make it on their own. In short, no matter what, killing off Clark Kent would be to kill off the heart of Superman.

I submit that the same is true for Batman. Only, in the opposite sense.

There is a rather fun and well-known argument among fans of Batman and Superman. The argument goes like this: _Who is the character's "true face?"_ For example, when the character of Clark Kent/Superman looks in the mirror, who does he see? Does he see Superman? Or Clark Kent? The same is true of Batman: when he thinks of himself in third person, does he say, "Okay, Bruce, let's do this," or does he say, "Okay, Batman, let's do that"?

The most common answer to this question is that, for Superman, the secret identity is his real identity. In other words, Clark Kent is his real self. Clark merely puts on a cape and tights to hide his identity, because Clark wants to protect his loved ones. Superman is the false identity: Clark is the real thing.

For Batman, the answer is usually the opposite. It is Bruce Wayne who is the illusion; Batman is the real being, wearing Bruce Wayne as the disguise. When he puts on his cowl, he is putting on his true face.

This is also the view of Batman reflected most frequently in the comics. For example, in _Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth_, there comes a moment when the inmates of Arkham want to tear off Batman's mask and see the face underneath. But the Joker, Batman's equal and opposite, crows back at them:

_"Oh, don't be so predictable [...] That **is** his real face!"_

This is just one of many instances. Many other examples abound, but I don't have the patience to dig them up, so if you want you can easily do that yourself.

There are times when other writers challenge this prevailing view, of course. For example, in a storyline called "Bruce Wayne: Fugitive," Bruce Wayne is framed for the murder of his latest love interest. After being put in prison and breaking out, he decides to completely abandon his public Bruce Wayne persona and only live as Batman, 100% of the time. The other members of the comic book Bat Family, including Nightwing (Richard Grayson, the first Robin), Robin (then Timothy Drake) and Oracle (Barbara Gordon, former Batgirl and daughter of Jim Gordon) all attempt to persuade him otherwise, and emotional theatrics result. In the end, Batman is forced to admit that by giving up on Bruce Wayne, he is indeed giving up a vital part of himself.

But even this story does not mean that Bruce Wayne is his real face: it just means that Batman can't give up where he came from, his origins, since Bruce is sort of like the "parent" of the Batman. And it certainly does not provide fodder for the idea that Bruce Wayne can ever give up being Batman. Not without dying, at least.

But that is exactly what Nolan wants us to believe in the third movie.

In one particularly telling scene in the film, the character played by Gordon-Levitt admits (and I'm paraphrasing here) that he feels the same emotions as Bruce, being haunted by the loss of his own parents. He talks about his foster home and how the foster parents claimed to "understand," the subtle emphasis being that they did not, in fact, understand. Then, the Gordon-Levitt character says something profound: he talks about how eventually, an orphan is expected to be able to move on, _but, despite all his efforts, an orphan cannot_. He cannot simply forget about what has happened to him. It is never going to go away. The tragedy never heals. And it spurs him on, the rest of his life.

Now, categorically, to say this is always true is to be wrong. While traumatic events can seriously impact a person's life, it would be false to say that they always have to be the exact center of a person's consciousness. A person who has suffered an ordeal does not need to make it the defining moment of their life. I have seen this truth in the people I know: some have been able to find something else that moves their world, while others simply cannot. I say this here and now because of the possibility that someone reading this might themselves have experienced something terrible; and I don't mean to spread despair, any more than I want to spread false hope. The simple fact is that some can move on. Some can't, even though they can always try.

Now, answer this question: Which of these groups does Bruce Wayne fall into?

The problem in the movie here is that Bruce Wayne is not the sort of individual who moves on. Nolan should have taken what Gordon-Levitt's character said, and applied that to Bruce Wayne. Why is it that Gordon-Levitt's character can't move on, but Bruce's character eventually can? Because Nolan wants a legacy hero: he wants a demonstration of his movie's dramatic theme, that we all can become heroes. Therefore, in order to make Gordon-Levitt into the new Batman, Nolan must somehow get rid of Bruce Wayne. Killing off Batman would make too big a splash. So the only other alternative, if this movie is going to end happily, is to have him retire, in order for his successor to take up the mantle. This message—anyone can be Batman—rings loud and clear through the movie, and make no mistake, it is indeed inspiring.

But Batman _can't_ retire. The comics, the animated series, and even Nolan's previous two movies all make this perfectly clear. The only other series where Batman retires permanently is the animated series _Batman Beyond_, but even then, Bruce Wayne is a cantankerous old fart who is just itching in his skin to somehow, somehow, somehow get back on the front lines, damnit! Batman does not, and will not, ever accept going peaceably into the night. Because, in his true heart, he is Batman: and Bruce Wayne is his mask. He will no more hang up his cape than Superman will choose to crush his glasses, forsake his parents and Lois Lane, and live permanently in his tights. For them, such choices would make life unbearable.

Even if one were to take the point of view that Batman and Bruce Wayne are both masks—that, in fact, the individual who was born with the name of Bruce Wayne does not ever show his true face, and neither Batman nor Bruce Wayne are his true self—this one fact about him will not change. He will not stop being Batman. Ever. He cannot. It is what keeps him going; in a way, it keeps him sane.

Nolan understood this perfectly in the first two movies. Both of them take this theme and run with it, seamlessly.

_Batman Begins_ shows a Bruce Wayne who is so driven, he gives up everything and even ends up in a Chinese prison in order to find something that brings meaning into his life. Since that movie was dedicated to showing how a normal human being can decide to put on a mask and beat up dangerous people in alleys, of course this is the perfect note: one needs to rationalize this decision to become Batman, and making Bruce Wayne into a driven and haunted man is the perfect rationalization. Superman has awesome powers; and so he has the sense of responsibility. But Bruce Wayne has no powers, and he has a giant bank account. What is to stop him from just bankrolling a ton of charities, and being an activist in that way? Why would a billionaire wear a mask? Well, the only possible answer is that he needs something _more_: that he cannot live just sitting back and taking it easy, and instead is driven to near madness before adopting a mask.

_The Dark Knight_ kept up this theme perfectly. The Joker was introduced as Batman's foil: and he mocks Batman, claiming, "Don't act like you're one of them, you're not! Even if you'd like to be." The Batman's arch nemesis clearly sees that Bruce Wayne is something different, and no amount of Bruce wishing will stop this reality. Batman is there to stay.

And with the way that Bruce/Batman keeps refusing to give up his mask, until practically forced to, it is obvious that he doesn't want to stop, either. Even when, at Dent's press conference, he is given the opportunity to use Dent as bait—hardly a good decision and a sign of a deeply manipulative person, which is also a hallmark of Batman's personality in the comics—he takes it without a second thought. Though he has some qualms, ones that he reveals only to Alfred (who continually pushes Bruce to remain Batman, perhaps sensing that it is something Bruce desperately needs), on a deep level, he wants to keep being Batman. And Bruce's ending lines in the movie seem to imply that he has lost all of his hesitancy, and will bear the brunt of being Batman unflinchingly from here on out: "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. I can do those things. Because I'm not a hero. Not like Dent. I killed those people. That's what I can be... I'm whatever Gotham needs me to be."

(By the way, Alfred's support of Batman in _TDK_ is a marked difference from his disapproval in the third movie, where Alfred is willing to quit in order to try and force Bruce to stop; this character change is never explained.)

On top of this, the person who Bruce loves the most also sees the same thing. In perhaps one of the most intimate and telling moments of _TDK_, Rachel Dawes writes her "Dear John" letter to Bruce, which contains this amazing quote:

"When I told you that when Gotham no longer needed Batman, we could be together, I meant it. _But now I'm sure the day **won't** come when **you** no longer need Batman_. I hope it does."

Emphasis mine. But what an emphasis!

This is the reason why Rachel Dawes, the love of Bruce's life, who grew up with him, is going to break his heart. She is marrying Harvey Dent, because of Batman. Because Bruce Wayne _needs_ Batman. He can't live without it. It is who he is, on a fundamental level. To end Batman would be to die in his soul.

Until the third movie... where, somehow, he has magically gone into retirement: a retirement that in no way is hinted at in the ending of _The Dark Knight_. If anything, the end of _TDK_ seems to suggest that, having nothing left, Bruce Wayne will be Batman—always and forevermore. Nolan had set things up perfectly: no strings attached, and stuck with the responsibility of his city, Bruce Wayne is now Batman's alter ego, instead of the other way around. Rachel's death has severed that last real string that attached him to the possibility of becoming solely Bruce Wayne: as Rachel warned him, "Don't make me your one chance for a normal life." But he did, and he paid the price for it: the price to always be Batman.

Yet, in this third movie, Nolan effectively sacrifices Bruce's character for the sake of his message: one of empowerment, one that says we all can become Batmen. I have no problem with the message that anyone can be a hero. In today's climate, it is the perfect sort of message that the people of the United States need; heck, people around the world need it. But the problem here is confusion between "Batman" and "Hero." _The Dark Knight_ perfectly drew a line in the sand between Batman and Hero: they are similar, but not synonymous. In _Rises_, however, they are the same. Nolanverse seems clear: there can be no other masked hero but Batman. This is a limitation that severely cuts into Batman himself.

The comics do not have this limitation. By adding in secondary characters, sidekicks, the comics allow for the possibility that there can be more than one masked hero in Gotham. And, more than that: they mean that every person, as a unique person, can become his own unique hero. Dick Grayson was Batman for a short time: but, even though he wore the cowl, in the comics he discussed how it felt more like "playing a role" than actually being Batman. Because he wasn't really Batman; not like how Bruce Wayne was. He was Dick Grayson. And as Dick Grayson, his alternate identity should have been Nightwing—he should have been free to be himself.

Seeing as Nolan's version of Gotham did not have room for a Robin, Nolan's ability to give this message was hindered from the beginning. But Nolan's decision to sacrifice Bruce Wayne's driving motivations and character persona for the sake of Nolan's central message was, I believe, the largest mistake in the film, a structural and thematic mistake that makes _The Dark Knight Rises_ into something completely different from the previous two films. It just does not seem to mesh with anything: with _Batman Begins_ and _The Dark Knight_, as well as with the whole Batman Mythos in general. I don't know who the central character of _TDKR_ is, but although he has the same name, he is definitely not Bruce Wayne.

All this being said, however, the film is still a wonderful masterpiece. A lot of reviews have been giving Nolan the label of "auteur"—and, given the themes and displays of this movie, it is a title he fully deserves. I confess to be disappointed with the treatment of Batman in this film, but that will not stop me from hurrying to the theatre to see it again, or from buying it on DVD, nor from being excited to hear about Nolan's next new big project. Given how Nolan now has the name recognition and probably the funds to do his own works, I would hope that he would turn next to some fiction sprung from his own imagination. Because it is obvious that he was chafing under the pressure of delivering something truly Batmanesque this time: and a true creator like him should be free to tell the story he wants and needs to tell. My one ending point is, simply, that while the movie was fantastic, its subject matter should have been something else other than Batman, seeing as Batman has a larger story behind him than just a single movie.

Only Clark Kent can be Superman, since he is the true face of Superman. And since Bruce Wayne is only a shadow of Batman, it is proper for me to say: only Batman can be Batman. Anything else hurts his legacy, and it is a deep shame that Nolan could not find a way to salvage it within the confines of his film.

alice chess

.

.

.

Given the responses I've already gotten to this review, I've decided to go ahead and post a potential "TDKR" rewrite I was working on to the end. Note that if the above review didn't already have enough spoilers, then **THIS SECTION WILL PRACTICALLY SPOIL THE WHOLE MOVIE FOR YOU**. Don't read it until you have seen the movie!

I must admit to a little bit of nervousness about this, however. Nolan is a professional; and on top of that, he is a genius. So there is no way that I can compare myself with his storytelling ability. Especially because I wrote this in, like, 5 hours last night! I might be able to write fanfiction, but there is a difference between writing fanfiction and rewriting someone's work. Therefore, take the whole thing with a grain of salt. In fact, you readers probably ought to come up with your own versions of the rewrite: you have your own imaginations, after all.

Another thing I want to point out is that this is not meant to be an insult to the movie or to Nolan. In fact, this probably should be treated as an homage of sorts. It's only because I care about Nolan's version that I am going to rewrite it as my own. Therefore, I am going to try and keep many of his version's plot elements; with one exception. Seeing as this is fanfiction, I do not have to worry about the death of Heath Ledger. And while I completely understand Nolan's refusal to add anything about the Joker in his new film, because he saw that as possibly tainting Ledger's performance, I must also disagree on that point. Wiping Ledger from the film was a little bit too much like saying, "He never had an effect on this universe." While recasting the Joker definitely would have been wrong, perhaps it would have been better to say at least something about the Joker, so that maybe this could show some kind of impact he had on Bruce. In any case, without the use of actors, I can write the Joker into my version—after all, fanfiction is fanfiction.

Anyway, apologies if this seems rushed. Maybe I'll revise sometime.

On to the story...

.

.

.

**TDKR: Rewritten**

It has been two years since the Joker was captured and Dent was killed. Bruce has never given up being Batman: he still stalks the streets but he does so with a new fervency. Seeing as he has almost always been hunted, even since the ending of _Batman Begins_, this new manhunt over his killing of Dent does not make him shirk his duties: he is used to being tracked by the police. It does make things harder, though. A couple examples:

_The police_ are now hunting him with a new sense of need. He's now a wanted killer, not an unnamed hero of the masses, and the man who puts him behind bars will surely be celebrated. Many of the police will even open fire first, asking questions later. This is a change that even Gordon cannot stop, because it would make him seem too soft on Dent's killer.

_The media_, while not a physical threat, nevertheless provide a constant source of stress. Every newspaper in the country has an article out about the evils of the Batman. Every day, GCN's most popular night anchor, with a twisted look of glee, ends his broadcast with the following: "It has been 734 days since the death of Harvey Dent. 734 days since his killer, the Batman, is on the streets. If you know anything, please contact the number on the bottom of your screen. Together, we can finally give Harvey Dent rest, and free Gotham from its resident madman."

And, worst of all, _the people_ now fear him. Before, he cast fear into the hearts of the criminals, but was inspiring to the general people. Now the same little boy who used to say, "I want to be Batman!" runs screaming from him in terror. This hurts him, in a place of his heart that he did not think he had any more.

But Dent's legacy is assured. A new wave of politicians, all speaking in the same tones and with the same words, have come to light in every election. Most are simply lying to ride the wave of Dent's popularity. Others—a few, but present nonetheless—appear to be the genuine thing. Reformers. Dent has actually done it; in death, but he has done it. He is truly the symbol of hope that Batman could never be.

To further protect himself, Bruce has decided to adopt a new characteristic into his Bruce Wayne persona. After his fight with the Joker and Dent, he had lain in bed for over a week, nursing his injuries to both body and soul. Afterwards, for over a month, he walked with a heavy limp. His excuses were many and varied—rock climbing, motorcycle accident, fell down the stairs—but eventually this crystallized into a new trick: he always carries a cane with him, leaning heavily upon it. After all, a cripple cannot be Batman.

This extra precaution sometimes provides him with a source of amusement. Because he is seen as a cripple, when he sneaks up on others he is always unexpected. It is a valuable skill—one that he is currently using on the woman.

He has hosted another party at the newly rebuilt Wayne Manor; and, while the rich happily attend, they do so now with a hushed sense of caution, concerned that Crazy Wayne will fly off and insult them again. Still, money is money, and they come when invited.

As has the woman with the catsuit.

She's not wearing it now, Bruce can tell. She probably doesn't even have it on underneath the maid's uniform. Her posture was perfect, most of the night: head bowed, eyes darting around the floor. Her hair is tightly wound in a bun, but messily so. No makeup. It gives the perfect impression of a younger girl who is in no way prepared to be in high society, even as a maid. She is too shy to be a waitress, let alone a burglar.

He is not fooled.

Bruce has been watching her for over a year. She started in Paris, and made her way across the continent. Normally he would not care overmuch about a particular thief, even one as successful as her—but anyone who wears a costume, after the Joker, immediately gains his attention. The only other person, aside from her, who has likewise gained his attention in this manner is a man, codenamed "Bane," who is currently in South America. This woman, however, is here now; in his own rooms—and to be honest, he is more concerned about her anyway, as Bane seems only to be using a mask to relieve his suffering over a series of facial wounds.

Instead of serving a legitimate purpose, this woman's sense of humor, of robbing others in a catsuit, speaks volumes about her obviously vibrant personality. Unlike Bane, who is constrained to the South American drug trade, she is another potential mastermind. Even the Joker had begun as a common thief; so who knew what she could turn out to be?

He watches as she snoops around in his rooms. She moves with a feline grace, all traces of the hesitancy she had previously employed gone. Once she is alone, she feels free to be herself, a prowler and hunter, and Bruce can see her inner soul very well.

But what a soul! He finds himself almost willing to step into the room, wanting to get a closer look at her. She is moving like a whisper of wind, carefully inspecting everything, but leaving no traces. This is not an ordinary thief; it's not something most of the populace could do, even with the proper training. She's been born to do this. And some animal magnetism about her, something spiraling through her and out of her form, seems to beckon to him. He wants to step in and introduce himself—perhaps she'll react poorly, perhaps not, but either option feels good to him, and the anticipation is enough to make him dizzy. Yet he holds back, merely watches.

After all, a cat will eat a bat, if given the chance.

This is a reconnaissance mission, he surmises. She isn't here to take anything tonight, not while she doesn't have her suit on. That wouldn't fit with her M.O.

Then she pauses, turns, and glances in his direction. Immediately her face becomes that of a cowed schoolgirl. He's been caught, and he didn't even see it coming.

Leaning heavily on his prop, Bruce hobbles into the room. He wonders if she will notice that he's limping on the wrong side; the cane should be in his left hand, not his right. Still, he had absentmindedly been switching it in his hands while watching her, and didn't think to switch it back before appearing. He's gone and lost his head, he realizes. It's a dreadful thing. Yet the idea that she could catch him in his act—that should not bring a thrill up his spine, but it does.

"Oh!" She says, feigning surprise. "Oh, please excuse me, Mr. Wayne! I-I didn't mean to intrude." She rambles on a moment, playing her part just as he grips the prop of his, but his attention has left her, magically—because now, from his new position in the room, he can see something he couldn't from his previous angle.

"Incredible," he finds himself muttering, the cane switching hands as he uses it to swing the chest doors open wider, revealing the cracked safe within. "This was supposed to be unbreakable." After all, he'd designed it himself. This realization makes him place the cane back on the ground, leaning heavily upon it; it's not a prop anymore, he really does need it. Who _is_ this woman? He feels giddy and terrified all at once; after all, in the false bottom of that safe, he has a series of important Batman documents...

"Oops," she says, and there's a newness to her tone, a condescension, that wasn't there before. He barely has time to lift his eyes to her before she knocks the cane out from under him, and thank goodness he'd really been leaning on it instead of just pretending, because he doesn't need to feign collapsing. From the floor he simply stares up at her, bewildered, as she announces,

"It's been a pleasure, Mr. Wayne. Your caviar was a little dry, though. Crunched in my teeth, and we can't have that. In any case, adieu—we won't meet again."

Then she is gone through the window. He marvels for a few moments; after all, the dexterity with which she jumped to the frame, and the sight of her deliciously long legs in tights, are still quite fresh. Then he realizes his quandary. As a cripple, he cannot go after her. It is a clean getaway on her part. Whatever she has taken is lost—and he knows that he has left his mother's pearls in that safe...

He rages then, for a few seconds, playing his part as he gets on hands and knees to crawl over and retrieve the cane, keeping up the appearance of his second costume just in case she's watching, although he's quite certain that she's left him now. After all, she must have bought into his disguise as a cripple, not realized that he'd switched hands, if she was confident enough to think that knocking out his cane would stop him from following.

Only when he has the cane in his hands, does he realize that he might be mistaken. She might, indeed, have realized that he'd switched hands, or else been knowledgeable enough about the human body to realize that he was faking a limp. After all, she could simply have gambled that he wouldn't want to reveal his disguise... and this makes a bitter taste swell in his mouth.

Making his way over to the safe, however, he finds a further surprise: the valuables within are gone, and the false bottom has not been disturbed; but there is a light residue on the outside. She has dusted for his fingerprints. Which must mean that this was more than a simple robbery.

A cold feeling washes over him; she has moved up in the world, gone from robbery to identity theft. Who knows where she will stray next?

He ignores the new thrill that races through him.

.

The Catwoman had kidnapped a Congressman on her way out. This led to a nation-wide woman-hunt, but she was nowhere to be found.

It also confirmed Bruce's worst suspicions: she was indeed becoming more dangerous. He just hadn't thought that her evolution would have happened so fast—indeed, that she would move all the way up from identity theft to kidnapping as he lay there on Wayne Manor's floor.

Thus the Batman found his night occupied by searching for her. Usually, at this time of night, he would be tracking the latest information the mob. However, a Congressman took priority... one was national, and the other, while important, was local.

And the Catwoman weighed heavily on his mind. She was an even bigger threat.

What the hell did she want with his fingerprints, anyway?

It was past four in the morning, with only one more scant hour before daylight, when he finally received what he was waiting for over the police monitor: they had picked up a text message sent via the Congressman's cell phone. With the police and SWAT on high alert, Batman knew he had literally minutes before they would swoop down on the location.

He still managed to get there first.

As befitting his training in "theatricality and deception," bursting through the skylight was his method of entry. Several of the people inside the bar, being merely normal patrons, saw him and, screaming, rushed to flee. There was a small minority of men, centered around a table, did not follow. These opened fire, but their bullets went wild, and there were only four of them. Two were taken down within seconds; one of the remainder fled, and the last decided to hold up his hands in surrender. The Batman punched him down anyway.

Hiding under the table, he found the congressman, dazed and drugged, and another man whom Bruce vaguely recognized—the fellow was a secretary, he knew that much, but the name of the man's employer escaped him in the heat of the moment. Beside them cowered the Catwoman.

"You," Batman growled, and, reaching out to seize her arm, he dragged her out from under the table. "Why did you bring the congressman here?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, fairly shrieking in manufactured terror. "I didn't!"

"The hell you didn't," Batman replied flatly, kicking over the table. The secretary was blubbering in infantile shock, but the drugged congressman giggled like a girl. Ignoring both of them, Batman moved to grip her close, lifting an arm with the intent of shooting off a grappling hook to send them both airborne.

However, the moment she was being held by only one of his arms, she elbowed him in the gut.

It was a hard blow and without his armor, Bruce was certain he would have been flattened. He stared at her, incredulously, realizing that she had possessed some form of advanced martial training in addition to the gymnastics and theft skills she already had demonstrated.

"Oops," she merely said in response to his silent query, lilting her voice, and tilting her head _just so_. He wouldn't have been surprised if she had started to purr.

Is she toying with me? Bruce had to wonder. Does she know I'm Wayne? Why repeat the same phrase if she doesn't know who I am underneath the suit?

Then everything went to hell. The bang of the front door behind him told Batman that the police had arrived, nearly two minutes sooner than expected. Amongst all the sudden chaos, the Catwoman's immediate knee to his balls was unexpected. Due to the armor, it didn't truly hurt; although the sudden feeling of her sharpened stiletto sinking into his foot—that did.

He stumbled, made the mistake of releasing her, and she immediately ran toward the policemen.

"Help me!" she screamed, her panicked face fitting perfectly with the role of an ordinary bar-hopper. "Oh shit, help me! It's the Batman!"

Having no choice, unable even in his armor to take what surely would have been a hail of bullets, Batman used his already-raised arm to tell the grappling hook fly. He was swept up out of the room, cape swirling behind him like a tornado, and the beast within him raging. He'd lost her—she was going to get free from this!

The only thing he could do, he surmised, would be to flee, double back, and try to pick up her trail. Maybe she would lead him to her base location, although given how skilled she was in a variety of disciplines, this would seem to be a long shot.

Then a bullet bit into his shoulder.

It wasn't a cop, he realized, dimly. He was airborne, therefore the shot had to have come from above. There was no way the SWAT had gotten into the higher levels of the buildings around them. This led to one conclusion: Catwoman was not working alone.

This had been a trap all along.

His arm numb, he could only watch in horror as his fingers released the gun, and he dropped six stories to the ground.

.

Strange dreams came to him, in the twilight of his unconsciousness. He found himself remembering Dent, Rachel, his parents. Cruel, hilarious laughter cackled somewhere in the background, and he nearly curled up into himself trying to block the sound out. A vague image: a man in purple, upside down, swinging perilously from a great height. The same height that he had fallen from...

Then Ra's voice: _If you make yourself more than just a man..._

"So, it seems you are just a man after all, are you not, Bruce Wayne?"

And that was the voice that woke him. He found himself staring into the face of someone he had not expected; although the voice, distorted as it was, should have given him some warning. It was a face he had only seen on computer monitors: the face of Bane.

"Don't bother trying to puzzle it all out," Bane said. "We already know everything, and there's no point in me explaining anything to you. I am not a man who wastes words, when every breath for me holds the potential of pain."

Sitting up, he found himself in some sort of cage, the rusted metal bars thick and twisted, like some kind of animal had tried to burst its way out. Bane stood in the center of it, a mere ten feet from him; and on the other side of the bars, the indistinct shapes of men carrying guns stood grimly like sentries. The cage was narrow but several stories tall, suggesting they were underground. One figure in the shadows was moving, however; prowling on the outside, its lithe form gained Bruce's attention immediately. It was too thin to be a man.

The Catwoman. And she was pacing, two stories above them, her sharp eyes focused upon Bruce. A frown marred her features.

"Tell me, Bruce," said Bane, refocusing Batman's attention upon him. "Can you guess how I know you under that mask—that lovely piece of theatricality and deception?"

Bruce let out a long breath.

"The League of Shadows," he responded. Bane nodded, his small, beady eyes making his face doubly difficult to read, seeing as most of it was already constrained by the life-giving mask. His next words came out in a rushed, harsh timbre:

"And now you have a choice to make."

Turning, revealing his back, the man began to stride about the cage, and in these moments Bruce realized just how big the fellow was. Almost twice his size; with muscles huge and gaping, hands almost as big as half a dinner plate. The man's shoulder was at the same level as Bruce's forehead. He was, in short, a giant—and his loping, self-assured gait told Batman that he knew how to use his size as his advantage.

"In the League," boomed Bane's voice, "the position of Ra's al Ghul is assured only through ascendancy—that is, he who is mightiest and most intelligent. Our previous mentor assumed his role only through the eventual defeat of his own master."

Bane raised one beefy arm, gestured. At this, another form stepped forward—and Bruce realized that the Catwoman was not the only woman present. This new woman, with her bronzed skin and glittery brown eyes, she formed the definition of "exotic beauty." But her chilled glare at Bruce sent a very cold feeling into his bones.

"As the killer of my father," she announced, "You, Bruce Wayne, are the rightful heir to the title of Ra's al Ghul."

Batman stared back. He did not think to protest: to claim that he had not, in fact, killed her father, but instead had only refused to offer him aid, a technicality that had both saved his city and allowed him to sleep at night. In the face of her open hatred, however, he found himself unable to speak, to justify what for her was surely a defining moment of her life.

After all, he remembered what it was like to face the killer of his own parents.

Distracted by this, it took a few seconds for the reality of her statement to settle into his mind. Staring out at the guards, Bane, and the metal bars around him, he found his throat dry.

"Will you take up the mantle?" The woman demanded. "I am Talia—and as the daughter of the last Ra's, I demand he have a proper successor. Will you take up my father's pledge to heal this world, and do what he did not?"

Forcibly, Bruce kept his voice even, neglecting to use the Batman's harsh rasp. "And if I refuse?"

Bane snorted, the sound loud and reverberating through his mask. His eyes, beady as they were, widened in obvious excitement. "Then someone else needs to take the position of Ra's. From you."

The wound in his shoulder throbbed. It could not have been more than a very sharp bruise, but it definitely gave Bruce trouble as he managed to stand. Bane's eyes remained focused on him; but the Catwoman, up in the balcony above, looked away.

Talia's face grew even more vicious. "So your answer is 'no'?"

Bruce didn't say anything.

What followed felt very much like it was the continuation of the dreams he had been having; with the addition of a great deal of pain, of course, but even that faded after a while, as new hurts were added onto the slightly less new ones. He gave back as well as he could; Bane also certainly sported his own share of bruises. The problem was that Bane had a great deal more of himself to _be_ bruised. To defeat an opponent such as this, Bruce knew that he would have had to work twice as hard, or rely on the Batman's theatre to support him; but this was impossible.

For Bane also knew about deception. He laughed at the smoke bombs Batman hurled; and an attempt to short-circuit the lights and use the cloak of darkness only proved that Bane was equally adept in the dark. In the end, Batman found himself suspended in midair, both of Bane's meaty hands supporting the heavy weight of his body—

Only to be thrown down over Bane's knee. The feeling was like being ripped in two—agony, unspeakably strong, swirled through him. And then came something even more horrifying: the feeling that his legs were completely gone, leaving pain only coursing through his belly and chest, which was constricted too tightly to allow him to scream.

He barely heard Bane's voice, soft now, as the hulking figure leaned low and explained what was to be done with him. He was going to be banished, thrown into the depths of a pit of hell. To die.

But not before being forced to watch Gotham die, first.

.

At first, the disappearance of the Batman was welcomed by Gotham.

There usually was a Batman sighting every night, even if it was only by hardened criminals. After a few days of no sighting, word got around. Mobsters hastily convened their friendly gangs, discussing what ought to be done, whether this was a trap, or if it was possible that someone had indeed defeated their great nemesis.

The Gotham media was frantic. On the one hand, they gloated. On the other, behind closed doors, they cursed the fact that they had no more information, that their great money-selling story had vanished overnight.

The police were relieved. Some of the pressures placed upon them eased.

Construction crews, around the city, discovered that some of their new hires had gone mysteriously missing. No explanation was immediately found.

Until the bombs went off.

Most of the bridges were destroyed. The tunnels in and out of the city were carefully collapsed. In the wreckage of the Gotham City Football Field, Bane himself stood and announced how he was returning Gotham to _the people_, and how a nuclear bomb was carefully tucked away inside the city. The police were ordered to surrender, or the bomb would explode in ten minutes. In a panic, most did as told; other fled into the civilian population and kept their heads down. Gordon, attempting to restore order, was shot by a recent police hire who then proclaimed allegiance to Bane, although he managed somehow to escape despite his wound.

With his allies beside him, the new Ra's moved through the city, stopping at the jails, at the courts, and finally ending up at the Asylum. Carefully explaining through a loudspeaker that he was merely setting "the people" free, Bane ordered that the asylum doors be opened, and that the police should take residence in the cells instead.

As the booming voice of Bane echoed through the halls, deep inside Arkham, in a cell sheltered from the rest, a man smiled. A low giggle escaped from his torn lips—but it was silenced, quickly, as the door to his room swung open, in conjunction with all the other doors in the asylum. Slipping out of his cell, the lanky man trailed up into the general population of lunatics, lost in the sea of bodies that swelled and flowed outside of the asylum doors. Nobody recognized him. How could they? His face was entirely nude; he was not himself.

Nobody was able to wonder, therefore, why his face was so hard, and his smile so grim.

.

.

.

**Author's notes:**

I'll post more, probably tomorrow, or the next day.

As I said before, this is rushed. I just wanted to jot down my ideas before I lost them; if anyone wants to take this story idea and run with it, by all means please do so, and tell me, because I want to read it! I promise to give good concrit.

Speaking of concrit, if you feel like it, by all means then please supply some. I wasn't checking my grammar and spelling overmuch while writing this, just trying to let the story come, so please don't worry about those things, focus on the story itself.

I also am aware that I've left out a great deal of the story in TDKR: there's no stock exchange hostage scene here, for instance, and Bane's opening is entirely absent, as are the characters of Alfred, Gordon, and Lucius. That's because I am focusing on Bruce in here, so the story thus far is coming entirely with a spotlight on him. I've also made Catwoman into a member of the League; that's because being a superhero/villain is no ordinary thing, and if you aren't crazy (like the Joker) then you probably need extensive training. The League is one of the few places to get that. (And that's another reason why I dislike the Gordon-Levitt ending; how is an ordinary beat cop supposed to be a vigilante without getting himself killed? It's not like Bruce can mentor or train him, seeing as he's given up entirely on Batman and is now living the private life while in hiding in Europe with Selina. Oh, I know-it's the idea of anyone being a hero that counts, and I can accept that much.)

Of course, if I were to make this into a full story, I would revise the whole thing, and this section here should probably be expanded to at least 3 chapters long. Here, I've given it to you in a rushed manner, oh well.

Also, if you ever see any stories where the Joker gets loose during Bane's reign over the city, know that that idea appeared here first, LOL! XD

Concerning the fact that I chose to make Bruce wounded when he fights Bane, I used that in a way to keep the same general idea as Nolan & the comics: when Batman first meets Bane, he isn't in top condition. In the comics, he'd just finished fighting all of his other villains. In the movie, he's older and more out of shape and practice than Bane. So I was trying to keep things even.

I wish I had put Alfred in there somewhere. Oh well. :/

As a final addendum, I want to offer my thoughts and prayers to the victims of the TDKR shooting in Colorado. It is a tragedy that someone has taken something meant to be only a good night out and turned it into this monstrous event. May such a thing never happen again. :(

alice chess


	2. Part II

I'm going to give some brief responses to the reviews I've had thus far. I was really pleased with the reviews: the ones that disagreed with me gave me a lot to think about, and I sincerely thank you all for that. I loved that some people were willing to leave signed reviews disagreeing (you guys rock). Ditto to the people who agreed with me, because it helped to know I wasn't alone. I went to see the movie again today; and although I expected they would, the problems I have with it still haven't died down. If anything they are slightly worse. I was very surprised.

Some people might think that my review implies a negative view of Nolan or of the movie—if so, you need to read my material again. I wrote repeatedly that I think the movie is superb and that Nolan did a beautiful job, so much so that I am truly happy to hand him my hard-earned money, and I continue to stand by that statement. I truly believe that if this movie were about some other hero besides Batman, I would think this movie is unbelievably fantastic in all aspects.

But it is about Batman—and Batman does not exist in a vacuum. Nolan has grown as a director in these past few years, especially with the creation of _Inception_, which should be considered one of the best movies of all time. Directing Batman created a hindrance on him, burdening him with Batman's past exposure, and that is why I think TDKR didn't do justice to Bruce. It did justice to Nolan—and Nolan should be praised for that. His vision is excellent. But equally it should be talked about that Bruce was misused in this movie, because Bruce does not solely belong to Nolan. He belongs to many, many writers and readers besides Nolan.

I feel the need to point out, though, in case some people don't realize: Just because someone criticizes something, doesn't mean that someone doesn't like that thing. Just because someone disagrees with something doesn't mean that they also don't like it. I like TDKR; but that doesn't mean I shouldn't or can't also criticize it. In fact, I tend to believe that the more you like something, the more you _should_ question it, because by doing that you will learn more about it.

Now, some brief responses.

Some people think that Nolanverse Batman should be seen as different from comics Batman. And I completely agree! Even in comicsverse, there are different versions of Batman—each writer writes him differently—so it would be foolish to expect Nolan to stick exactly to the comics, when even the comics don't do that. However, it is equally right to say that Nolan should not _ignore_ or _misuse_ the comics, because those are the source material for the movie that he is working with. He isn't creating in a vacuum; Batman existed prior to him, and if he is going to use the Batman name, he ought to give homage to the comics by actually making sure that the character is Batman, and not, say, a flamboyantly gay man who has nipples on his batsuit and runs around with a "bat credit card." That's an extreme example, but it works.

Because, within all of the different interpretations, there is still some kind of internal logic—what you might call an "essence"—that runs through all interpretations of Batman. All versions of Batman share this essence, and this is what makes him different from, say, Nite Owl in the series _Watchmen_, even though they are both rich guys who wear costumes with capes. It's not just the outward appearance that makes Batman into Batman. It's an internal part of his character, too. And, in his case, it is the drive to _be_ Batman that makes Batman into Batman. You can't just switch that off and expect to hold the same character in your hands, even if the new character looks like the original.

Let me give you guys an example. Let's turn once again to Superman. As Clark Kent, he has been raised to be a humane person and thus wants to fight crime in order to save others. He does this selflessly, because he recognizes that there is a need and that he can fulfill this need. He may not like that he has to do this, because it takes a lot of time, effort, pain, and it can cause him to experience some very not-nice things. But he does it anyway, because he can't _not_ do it, because he was raised to be a responsible and caring person. It's that caring side of him that keeps him from, say, becoming a tyrant over humanity.

Now let's say there is a story that removes that caring nature from Superman. Is he still Superman?

Well of course the answer is "no." Because characters are defined by their motivations, as much as by their appearances. If a guy has a big "S" on his chest and is wearing blue-and-red tights, but is flying around wantonly destroying buildings, you know that it isn't Superman, because Superman would _never_ do such a thing. Likewise, needing to be Batman _is_ the defining motivation of Batman. Him deciding to quit is as likely as, say, him deciding that he wants to make a living as a singer, and then serenading all of his rogues gallery, doing duets with the Joker.

The story of TDKR is the story of how Bruce Wayne finds a way to _stop_ being Batman. To, in essence, have him "move on." And while on one hand this is heartwarming, because it implies that Bruce can one day be truly happy, on the other hand this is impossible because it destroys his character. He might as well have pulled out the bat credit card from his pocket to pay for his & Selina's drinks at the end of the movie.

Other people claim that TDKR reinforces the idea that Bruce cannot stop being Batman. This is an interesting take, one that I can see some elements of in the film, having just rewatched it. However, I still think that the film, in the end, implies that Bruce has indeed moved beyond Batman: I mean, he's alive and well, and living with Selina in Italy. There's no implication that he's going back to Gotham, heck, he's been declared legally dead, given his home _and_ the Batcave away, and so even if he wanted to, it would be impossible for him.

Next, some people claim that Blake (Gordon-Levitt) will probably not become Batman, but instead some other hero. This is an interesting take, one that I definitely find more agreeable than the idea of him becoming Batman II. On the one hand, I can definitely see that Nolan couldn't imply that too strongly, because that would definitely create "Robin," and there's no room for Robin in Nolanverse; but on the other hand I also see Nolan suggesting that by inheriting the cave, _and_ with Bruce out of the picture, Blake is the new Batman—I mean, how is he supposed to get a new costume? From who? Lucius isn't going to help him, he doesn't even know him. There is a logistical problem here; where does he have the money to do the hero business?

Ultimately, however, the idea of Blake becoming another hero is not what the biggest problem is: the problem is, first and foremost, that _Bruce has retired from being Batman_. The cowl is empty and Bruce doesn't want to put it on again. And this is the obliteration of Bruce's driving internal essence. If Bruce & Blake had stayed in Gotham together, as Batman & The New Guy, there would be little to no problem! But Nolan seems to imply that Bruce, being gone forever, has passed Batman on to Blake.

In that vein, some reviewers suggested that Blake would need to be trained by Bruce. This is a great idea and I love it... even though it really is Robin literally imported into Nolanverse under a different name (_Batman Beyond_ style, with Bruce as mentor?). Mostly the idea is important because Blake is just a beat cop, and while they are given training, there is no way that a beat cop is capable of being a vigilante of the order that Batman must be. Likewise, given how Batman would often pause to give Blake advice, he was acting as a sort of surrogate mentor to Blake in the movie, something I was able to notice more this time around. It was a nice touch.

However, even if this were true, problems abound. How is Bruce going to train Blake when he's on the lam with Selina? The implication is that Bruce is 100% retired, since he's not waiting for Blake in the cave. And, finally, Bruce is still whole, intelligent, and healthy enough to take on Bane and win. BUT HE IS STILL RETIRED. In _Batman Beyond_, Bruce is an old man who is practically crippled, so he has no choice; here, in Nolan's vision, he has specifically _chosen_ to quit. The problem continues to remain, even in this, the best-case scenario...

Of course, you are all still 100% free to disagree. I like that other people had some different takes from me, and since this is a work of fiction it is possible for all of us to be considered 100% correct, even if our views contradict. I think we can all agree that Nolan is still an awesome director no matter what, and the movie was worth watching. Deal?

Other opinions are also welcome. Feel free to tell me & others your ideas; as I said before, I want to start a dialogue about this movie, because I think it is worth talking about.

Next, before I continue, let me pause for a second to do something I normally never do to a reviewer. Someone made the comment that Nolan's version of TDKR is better than mine. To that I respond: _No duh!_ Thanks, I didn't realize! (Totally not being sarcastic there. _Totally_. Wrap me in a blanket and beat me up, I'm not being sarcastic! /s.) Just in case nobody figured this out from my notes, I'm not aiming at being better than Nolan, and there's no way I could be. He's a professional, and he's had years to work his craft in this movie. I typed a story in 5 hours. Now how crazy would I be to think I could even approach Nolan with that kind of gap between us? I really don't want to discourage people from reviewing or saying their opinions, because I tend to think that multiple opinions are capable of being right, and everyone has a right to their opinion. But come on! I don't need to be told something that _I just said_ in my own notes. Please give me some credit; don't tell me the same thing that _I just said_, and _only_ for the sake of promoting your own movie review. If you're going to leave a negative review, by all means do so! I'm a big girl and I can take it. But please at least _read_ my stuff before doing so.

So, to reiterate, because some people didn't get it, this story is _NOT_ about being better than Nolan. This is an exploration on what Nolan's story could have been like, if he had tried to keep Bruce's internal motivation, the fact that he _needs _Batman no matter what. It is rushed, yes, and it is nowhere near perfect. The dialogue sucks and I'm not afraid to say that it is probably more brainstorm than full-on story, because I am just writing as I go. But its purpose is not to outdo Nolan. Its purpose is to serve as a jump-start for other's imaginations. I want people to read this and come up with their own possible revisions and rewrites of TDKR. I want to get people talking and/or thinking. So enjoy. This was written with other people's imaginations in mind.

Finally, last but not least, TO HELL with the people who "reported" this story. Just because you don't agree with whether or not this is "enough" of a story to be on here, doesn't mean that you should try to get it taken down, or try to get me into trouble. Who do you think you are? This is a form of cyber bullying and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. This form of self-righteousness doesn't benefit anyone, it just lets you think you are somehow superior because you want someone to get into trouble. I'm not taking this down, and if I could block you from reading it, I would, because obviously you don't know how to let other people enjoy themselves. That you won't even sign in to review cements the fact that you are cowards. Yes, harsh words I know, but you are not worth worrying over. If you spent the amount of time you spend trying to hurt others on actually producing something that others would enjoy, the world would be a much better place. So, by all means, "report" me. All you're doing is wasting the site's staff's time when it could be better spent on, say, stopping people who are stealing others' stories, or taking down stories that are made up exclusively of porn. This is going to stay up and if you don't like it, don't read it. It isn't harming anybody—and if this isn't a "story," then most of the stuff on this site isn't, either. You people really need to get a life.

On to the story...

.

.

.

**TDKR: Rewritten**

**Part II  
**

.

.

.

_It_ started out very slowly. If Batman had been present, even he probably would have not noticed _It_, at first—except, perhaps, for an occasional spark at the back of his neck, the raising of hair like the hackles of a frightened dog. But he was not present—and so nobody noticed. _It_ went on unabated, slowly picking up steam, independent of the world around _It._

Not noticing _It _was not the people's fault, however. The first few weeks were filled with unbelievable chaos. With both the prison and the asylum inmates loose, Gotham had quickly become a hellhole. The normal citizens were not organized, and, cowering within their homes, were not at all prepared for this, the perfect storm. With the police trapped in Arkham, tended by guards made up of the very people they had helped lock away, the general population was without any leader or organization. Bane had specifically sought out and killed as many local politicians as he could—and those who survived went deep into hiding.

This meant that only one form of organization was left: organized crime.

The mob bosses had a field day. With their organizations in place, their hired guns protecting them and those they cared about, they moved throughout the city, looting and scavenging everything they could. Most of them, for necessity's sake, swore allegiance to Bane, although everyone knew that this was likely only a temporary truce. Nonetheless, Bane and the crimelords split most of the prison populations amongst themselves, swelling their ranks with hundreds of new recruits.

The first of the ordinary people to suffer were the rich. The uptown neighborhoods, with their clean streets and carefully tended sidewalks and gardens, were flooded with a tsunami of unwashed bodies, replete with tattooed flesh, piercings, ripped clothing, spiked hair, and many other forms of body modification and marks that were rarely seen in the pristine neighborhoods of the businessmen and bankers. Homes were torn into; bank doors smashed and money looted, even though it was now useless—after all, without the United States government to back up the currency, it was little more than paper, but the people of the city's lowest classes had not realized that yet. Months later, those who now hoarded dollar bills would be burning them for fuel in the depths of Gotham's chilled winter. But that had not yet passed; and for now, they looted and celebrated, considering themselves rich men.

Concerning the people in these areas, many were killed. At first, they were targeted indiscriminately; a day into the rampage, however, and the attackers began to distinguish their victims. Men were killed, but many women, especially younger women, were preserved and forced into prostitution. However, by that time, their numbers were already low—and thus there was more blood on the streets than anything else.

A few of the most rich attempted to hide in panic rooms with their families. These were eventually forced to give in, months later, after being starved out.

While this was happening to the upper echelons of society, however, the middle and lower areas were not spared. Many in the middle class neighborhoods escaped the chaos because of the forewarning; they slipped away from their homes in the middle of the night, hiding amongst the lower classes, hoping that they would be overlooked. A few neighborhoods tried to band together; these set up barriers around a few strategically chosen houses, and with weapons held back the marauding bands of looters. This worked for a little over a week, before their gas and food ran out and they were overrun. None in these situations survived.

For the most part, however, those in these two sets of neighborhoods were spared from death. This was not to say that their lives were in any way improved; most lost something, whether a home or a possession or a limb or even peace of mind. Families were separated, and all lines of communication—internet, phone, and the like—were cut. It was as if the outside world ceased to exist; and the new inner world of Gotham was like nothing any of them had experienced before.

After the initial wave of chaos, which lasted for two weeks, things calmed down. Yet the people of Gotham did not come out of hiding; having lived in the city most of their lives, they knew when to recognize the calm before a storm.

The problem was simple: the city belonged to Bane. Nominally. But the mob bosses all knew that owning something _nominally_ really meant nothing. The city had been owned by the police, _nominally_, for years. But it had almost always been truly theirs. Now it wasn't... and they were chafing under that knowledge.

If Bane had been out of the picture, things would still have eventually erupted. The mob bosses, free of a common enemy, would have turned on each other. If they defeated Bane, they would still also have eventually turned against one another. However, with Bane in place, they all formed an embryonic truce, a gradual melding of their forces, slowly consolidating for what surely would be the street fight to end all street fights. For his part, Bane seemed unperturbed by this possibility, and could be seen striding about the streets with no small amount of careless arrogance.

In the renewed calm, the police who had somehow escaped custody, along with the few citizens who volunteered to assist, began to attempt to regroup. Gordon, who had escaped an assassination attempt at the hospital, was ostensibly the leader, but their organization was a very loose one, and at any time people could decide to leave. This unreliable nature made their situation very tenuous. Most of these potential resistance fighters were also not willing to attack Bane or the mob; they played defense, when Gordon himself knew that this would not be enough. He gave many arguments—"offense is the best form of defense"—but, as of now, few listened. Instead, most focused on methods of appeasement and ways of concealing the people that the resurgent police cared about.

Still, nobody noticed _It_.

In a way, the people could still be excused their ignorance. They were used to flashy pomp, a circus show, masked clowns and bombs exploding on every corner. It was no surprise that the people had forgotten, had neglected to remember how it had begun the first time. Had forgotten that it had taken months for the monster to gain momentum, to truly begin to master his craft, like a small spark slowly grows into a raging wildfire.

Because _It_ was, simply and certainly, the return of _Him_.

During the initial chaos of that first night, the non-Joker, because he had not been himself, had wandered around the streets like a drunken man. He had still had a dose of the drugs in him, and this made him sleepy. He was aware, however, that it was vital he remain awake, and so he overpowered his own weariness by sheer force of will. As the night had moved on, this had become easier. The drugs were gone from him by morning.

Bane and the crime lords had split the prison and asylum inmates among themselves, first by grouping them together, then cutting them into portions. Then there was a few hours where they had swapped men amongst themselves, trading men for the men they each knew, men they did not know for men who had previously belonged to their organization. Bane alone had refused to trade, merely opening up his gang membership to anyone who wished to join. A great many unaffiliated persons had signed up. The non-Joker, sans makeup, had joined as well. Nobody said anything to him; it was like he was invisible.

When the chaos had begun, he had not joined in. He had simply walked down the street with a casual air, a slight swagger, observing. He watched as the rich were pulled from their homes, screaming and begging, watched them die, watched the palaces pillaged, watched men running crazily about with handfuls of money, laughing like hyenas.

He did not laugh. If anything, his face was impassive. He passed no judgment, no approval, no... anything. He did not do anything.

He just watched. His eyes were sharp, but he bore the ultimate pokerface.

When, occasionally, a man would get too close to him, it was the non-Joker who would give way, yielding to the other the path. He made his way by dodging around and about, and nobody paid him any mind. As the city burned around him, he was given no more attention than a passing wind, moving harmlessly over the lost city.

There was a moment, on the fourth day, when Bane was walking down the street—in what would become a common sight in Gotham—all swagger, all arrogance, all on broad display. The hulking man had his hands tucked against his shirt collar, his beady eyes taking in the sights around him with ease, like a king surveying his subjects. The Joker, who was also walking, passed right by him. Neither said a word to each other. There was no hint that they even noticed.

Later on the same day, Bane stood upon the top step of City Hall, gave what was by then his usual speech:

"People of Gotham, I stand before you now as a liberator, a bringer of hope. By your own will you have freed yourselves and brought great change to this, your city. All is yours! From this day forth there will be no poverty, no hunger, and no disease. We are the people, and the people's will be done! Do as you please—for this world is and always has been yours!"

Many mobsters, not just those who were numbered among Bane's men, cheered wildly, holding up their rifles, their broken bottles, and their long knives. They chanted, "Bane! Bane! The People! The People! Bane!"

In the shadows, the Joker lurked, silently. His eyes swept over the crowd, almost as if counting them, one by one—and then he looked back up at Bane. The huge man had, while scanning the crowd, managed to find the Joker hidden in the back, standing out simply because he was one of the few not making a ruckus. When their eyes met, the non-clown smiled.

It was a very grim look. More of a grimace than a grin.

That night, for the first time in years, Bane had a nightmare. He found himself back in the pit, the hole of the earth, as far down and deep as Hell itself. This time, though, a man stood looking down at him, faceless, with the exception of a gaping wound where his jaw should have been. The man was holding a rope down to him... but before he could decide whether or not to climb, he woke up.

.

Bruce spent the next month in perpetual agony.

It was never merely of a bodily nature. Pain flared up and down his spine, grinding against the small of his back, leaping up into his skull and drumming with his heartbeat. Every bruise and break throbbed, horribly, and when infection set in he nearly lost himself in delirium. But the worst of it was not physical: his legs were empty, motionless and dead. He felt as if he should have been dead, himself.

"Your punishment must be more severe," Bane had told him, when he had first awoken. "You will watch your city burn. You will watch the men here as they try to make the climb. And you will know that you cannot even attempt it. You will only be able to watch..."

Bruce had cursed him, then, used up all his strength cursing him, and eventually lost himself to unconsciousness. Bane had not been moved by his outrage in the slightest, sitting calmly as Bruce had hurled his abuse. When Bruce woke again, his masked tormentor was gone.

There were two men, both allegedly the prison's doctors, who tended to him. One was very businesslike, setting his bones and ignoring his cries of pain. He was the one who turned on the television, and laughed when Bruce raged and roared over the sights of his lost city.

The other doctor merely observed everything, kept his head down. Occasionally he would offer a shushed word of advice to the first, but he did not stray near Bruce.

Bruce hated the television screen with every fiber of his being, but he could not stop himself from watching. There was no sound; only the scrawled words of GCN's news reports. But the pictures were clear enough. The video was blurry, but it got the message through.

His city was dying.

_He_ was dying.

It took a week for Bruce to attempt to move from the bed. He fell against the floor with a shout, and, in desperation, attempted to stand. To kneel. To _something_. But even his arms, with all the strength he had placed in them, could not budge his weight. The second doctor watched, quietly, from a corner of the room. He looked about to say something, or to stand and help, but then the first entered the room.

"Oh, so you are trying to make the climb already?" the first joked, his voice cutting. "Face it, boy, make it easy on yourself. You will never walk again."

Bruce would have cursed him, too, but the thought of angering one of his only sources of medicinal care held him at bay. He said nothing while he was picked up off the floor and returned to the bed, only stared silently as the second doctor bowed his head and left the room.

But he learned his lesson. He did not try to push himself again. He rested, when he could, slept when his stress and worry would allow it. Every day, he gained the slightest bit more strength. Every day, another sliver of his soul went up in smoke, as he saw the images on the screen. Many hours he lay there, more dead than alive, letting the flies trail over his sweaty skin as he stared, slack-jawed, in horror. He could only take so much—but still he always watched, unable to look away, unable to stop his eyes from following the story, the nightmare before him.

In all of this, it did not occur to him to wonder what had happened to the Joker.

.

The non-Joker killed his first victim on the fourth day of the third week. This was an accident. He had walked up onto the eighth floor of a hotel, and found a nice mattress in an unlocked room there. Given that so much things of comfort had been destroyed in the preceding chaos, he had been vaguely delighted to discover such a find. When he lay down upon it, however, something had jabbed into his back. Turning the mattress over, he found a nice stash of weaponry, most of it unloaded, jammed, or otherwise non-operational. To test some of the various instruments he had taken to firing out of the window. One shot went wild and killed a passerby.

It took him about an hour to realize what he had done. When he understood, he simply snorted, and, taking the most valuable pieces of his find, went down to search the body. He found a wallet—which he promptly threw in the sewer—and a small loaf of bread, which he sat and ate on the mattress, as he waited for whoever owned the place to arrive home.

When the fellow did, the non-Joker shot him, too.

Both bodies were shoved into the hotel room's closet. The monster spent the night on the mattress; in the morning, he was gone again, but there was a slight spring in his step which had not been there for some time. He moved now with slightly more purpose; and now, whenever he approached or was approached by others, the other men would yield to him, not the other way around. This was all done instinctively, as even the largest of thugs did not seem to realize that they had given way to someone who was by no means a physical match for them.

He walked west. It took him a day to reach his destination, mostly because he was sidetracked due to a fight between two women. He paused for a while, and stood along with a large, cheering crowd, as the women screamed and clawed at each other. The other onlookers gave him a wide berth, over two arms' length, but neither they nor he seemed to notice this, for it too was done instinctively.

The fight between the women lasted over three hours. They apparently considered whatever they were fighting for to be well worth the effort. The non-Joker never did learn what their reason was. He was distracted by the woman on the rooftop.

At first, he wasn't sure if it was a woman. He almost was tempted to say it was the Batman—and the merest thought of that, although he knew it could not be true, made his heart leap with such joy that he had not felt in a long time. But it could not be the Batman—and, when he told this to himself, he realized furthermore that it was too thin, short, and slinky to be his old enemy. It was a woman, in a costume. She watched the catfight below her, too, and he watched both them and her, for all three hours. By sunset, when the fight had ended, she moved off, and though he was tempted to follow, the non-Joker was more concerned with his own eventual destination. He resumed his journey west.

The safehouse he had built was carefully hidden. There wasn't much there. Just a supply of food, water, weapons, household chemicals, spray cans, empty bottles. And his suit. And his knives.

And his face.

.

One month into his captivity, Bruce tried to speak to the second doctor.

"When will I walk again?"

He asked the second man because the first had always seemed dead set on convincing him that he was through. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of asking mere moments before the first re-entered his room, and as a result his query was overheard. He thus had to endure a round of mocking, and watched, feeling helpless, as the second doctor said nothing. The man kept his head bowed; over the weeks, Bruce had learned that the fellow was mostly blind, if not completely so.

He waited another four days before asking again. The television screen, his perpetual tormentor, never faded from his sight. Every breath was beginning to feel like agony to him. But his arms seemed to have regained their strength; he could even sit up, on his own power.

He asked again, once he and the second doctor were alone.

"When will I walk again?"

The doctor was silent for what seemed like a long time. He stared at Bruce with his sightless eyes, then answered,

"When you stop asking yourself that question."

.

With his proper self restored, the Joker's first act was to recruit. He roamed the city, and when he encountered a group of men, he stepped into the shadows, let them pass. This pattern was repeated several times, until around three in the afternoon, when two men walked by him.

He killed one, and offered the other a choice; join or die.

The terrified man agreed.

They returned back to the safehouse, where the Joker fed his new goon, who looked like he had not eaten in a while. Then they stayed up until late at night, talking. The Joker was surprisingly civil. He could hold a very philosophical conversation with little to no effort. The goon, whose life had been spent in the Narrows, had never engaged in such a deep level of conversation—and furthermore, his opinions on anything had never been taken seriously.

By the end of the night, the new worker had already confessed to the Joker all of his many sins: he'd sold drugs at eight, joined up with the gangbangers at age fourteen, gotten caught and sent to prison for six years, and after returning to the streets joined the mob. Eventually he'd ended up in Arkham, mostly because he'd gotten caught cutting the fingers off one of his many girlfriends. According to him, however, this was not due to insanity, but instead because he'd caught her cheating and had been so enraged that he'd lost his head and done something a little crazy, which he now regretted. Hearing this, the Joker nodded sagely, lips pursed, and replied, with a laugh, "Well, haven't we all?"

In the morning, the new goon told the clown: "You know, you're not all that bad."

"Oh?" Asked the Joker. "What do you mean?"

"Well, it's just," said the goon, then hesitated, as if uncertain whether he should continue. However, at the Joker's encouraging—"well, spit it out, wontcha?"—the man eventually said:

"It's just that... everyone says you're crazy. No offense." The goon was quick to look apologetic. "I mean, now I don't think you're crazy, but some people say so. I just always thought you were some kind of ultimate villain, you know? Like the guys on Saturday morning cartoons. I thought maybe you'd kill your own men to prove a point, or because you wanted to let off steam, or something."

"Now Jake—" sighed the Joker, dramatically, "—killing your own men is just stupid. If I did that, then I really _would_ be crazy."

Then he sent the man away, after giving him some extra food, telling him how he wanted to start up a gang, and if the goon wanted to join him, he really should give it some important thought, and come back tomorrow. There would be good pay, good benefits, and best of all, he'd be part of something big, rather than just a nobody.

After shutting the door behind the man, the Joker turned, whistling, and took up some stray pieces of newspaper he'd found on the street. He doodled for a while, drawing little bats falling from the sky, as well as one climbing up out of the ground—this one, though, he seemed puzzled by, and spent some minutes staring at it, before scratching it out and moving on to drawing Godzilla terrorizing Gotham. He moved from Godzilla to Bane, and from there, his drawings began to take more formative shapes, things that vaguely looked like parodies of Gotham buildings, small lists of objects. As he doodled more and more, he began to destroy his older work, until he ran out of paper entirely. Then he sat and hummed to himself, seemingly lost in thought, snapping his switchblade in and out, in and out, all night long.

The following day, the man returned. He brought four friends with him.

.

From her vantage point, the former penthouse of Bruce Wayne, Talia al Ghul looked out over the city. Behind her, nestled on the seat of the couch, was _the_ bomb, cradled by pillows as if it were a baby. This set of rooms was the one place in Gotham that was untouched by looting—in fact, if anything, it was more elaborately bedecked and bejeweled that before. Bane, having won against Wayne, was now Ra's, and was determined to see to it that his new wife was happy in her home.

For her part, Talia was _oh so tempted_.

She fingered the pendant around her neck. Bane, as a sign of trust, had given her the trigger to the bomb itself. She knew he was trying to win her over by cloying gifts, and she was mostly willing to be won. After all, if she tired of him, there was always the bomb. He was not what she had wanted; but for now, she was willing to settle, and for now she did not flick the switch. She was supposed to do that only when the League was done with Gotham and they were well out of range.

But it was _oh so tempting_. To just finish it all. Get it over with.

She knew that Wayne had not remembered her; how could he? She had been younger than him by almost a decade, and the only time they had met, he had been delirious with fever. A wound he had received while training had become infected. She had helped to care for him.

She wondered who was caring for him now.

When she had first seen him in the League, her father had told her: this is the man you are going to marry. And she had believed him. She had been happy, because Wayne had been handsome, and strong, and looked like a nice person. At her age, these were the things that mattered.

Then her father had died.

For a while, she had tried to rationalize it. Wayne was a traitor, though, and no amount of rationalizing would bring her father back. Slowly, her old crush turned to hatred, rather than blossoming into the love it should have become—and she grew bitterer and bitterer, as she had struggled to find a way to let the League's council appoint her, a woman, as its new commander. The council would not be swayed, however, and here she was.

Being _oh so tempted_.

What if Wayne had said yes? Would she still have ordered Bane against him, or would she have requested the giant man to stand down? Would Bane have done as she asked? Or was she just a method to that man—a way into power, into ruling the most powerful organization on the face of the Earth. She wondered if her mother—the previous Ra's wife, and the daughter of the Ra's before that—had had the same questions about her father, Henri Ducard.

Maybe, if Wayne had said yes, she would have forgiven him. Eventually. At first, of course, she would have been enraged, and tried to kill him, probably many times, through sabotage and poisoning. But if he survived that, and was nice enough, maybe she would have...

A small noise behind her brought her out of her reverie. Turning, she saw the woman in black.

"Oh," she said. "It's just you."

The woman, lounging on the couch opposite the bomb, only said: "This is it, isn't it?"

Talia frowned at her. "And that's your way of greeting royalty?"

"Honey," purred the woman, "I steal from you people. You aren't anything to me but prey."

"Then you may leave," Talia told her, crossing the room, moving for the set of swords above the fireplace mantle. An old Wayne heirloom, she guessed. Taking one up, she swished it through the air, drawing an invisible "X" over the Cat Woman's face. This woman... she had always bothered her, prancing about and causing a ruckus whenever she was present in the room. She had also outlived her usefulness, as far as Talia was concerned; she had gotten Wayne's fingerprints, and thus access to all his bank accounts, but beyond that she was a mere annoyance.

Bane didn't want to kill her, though. He argued that she had been useful in fetching and stealing things for the League for a long time, and it was petty to waste such a valuable resource.

From her perch, the Catwoman eyed her, lazily. Then, stretching theatrically, as if she was showing off that her own clothes were skintight—not the pompous, restricting clothing that Talia was required by tradition to wear everywhere except here, in her own home—she stood, and stalked over to Talia, grinning.

"You might want to put that away, little princess."

Her teeth were sharp, but the threatening effect of her was ruined by the fact that she was quite a bit shorter even than Talia.

"Big words for a common thief."

The Catwoman's face fell. "Darling, I am _anything_ but common."

"Really? Is that why my father found you living on the street as a whore?" Talia asked, levelly, but to her surprise the Catwoman grinned again.

"Haven't you ever wondered how _he_ knew that _I_ was a whore?"

It took Talia a few seconds to realize the implication; the other woman's lilt and luscious look, with their innuendo, only distracted her. Once she knew, she found herself shrieking, "How dare you!" and lunging forward. She clipped the Catwoman's hair, but the lithe form twisted away, flipping up to the fireplace mantle and seizing the other sword.

For a while, they stabbed at each other, slashing and slicing, blocking and parrying. The Wayne heirlooms were still in good shape and gave and received blows quite well. The Catwoman was quite good with feints, and while Talia knew she was better, she still found that the thief drew first blood—probably due more to Talia's anger making her sloppy, than any real skill on the Catwoman's part, since the woman was trained more with whip and staff than sword and dagger. At the outrage of seeing her own blood, Talia fairly threw her own sword onto the floor, where it clanged outrageously loud against the marble, and brought her sliced hand up to her mouth.

"Tsk, tsk," the Catwoman said, but despite her tone her eyes were somewhat apologetic. She moved closer, and lifted Talia's hand to inspect it. "Oh, it's nothing bad. You'll be fine. Next time you'll know better, princess."

"Next time, I will call Ra's and have him break you in half, like the Batman," Talia threatened. She was surprised to catch the way the other woman's face twisted, slightly, like a grimace, before the Catwoman's eyes darted to her neck, and she announced:

"Oh! How lovely!"

Instinctively, Talia's remaining good hand flew to the trigger around her throat, remembering how it was disguised as a necklace with a mother-of-pearl pendant. Her own eyes flew to the necklace ringing the Catwoman's bare neck, which was a string of pearls, tightly bound.

"Yours are nicer," she said, simply, trying to distract the thief.

"You think so?" Asked the Catwoman, releasing Talia to strut, perhaps a little too sultry for Talia's taste, smirking. "I got them from Bruce Wayne. Heirlooms, you see."

Acid churned in Talia's stomach, which dropped when she realized that she wanted to ask how the Catwoman had gotten them. Had Wayne given them to her? Or were they stolen?

Why did she care? She's didn't care about Wayne—she hated him. She knew this.

"Well, I'm sure you'll take good care of them," she said, turning to pick up both swords and replace them on the mantle. "After all, you go through so much jewelry—"

But she had to stop talking. When she turned around, the other woman was gone. Talia's eyes flamed. Bitch...

Around her throat, her hand gripped the trigger tighter. Surely the dark woman wouldn't dare steal from her—because if she truly wanted this necklace, nothing, absolutely nothing, would stop her; no safe was truly safe, no watchman was watchful enough. Only the fact that she was currently gripping it in her hands reassured Talia that she even was still wearing it.

Should she tell Bane, she wondered? Maybe the new Ra's could get the thief to stay away.

No, Talia told herself. No, she would handle this. She had wanted to lead the League of Shadows; she could protect the trigger herself.

.

.

.

**Author's Note**

So here's the next installment. I think it will take me a few more days to put another one up after this, because my work starts again tomorrow. Yay for getting up at 5:30 every morning!

alice chess


	3. Part III

Hey, I'm back! I also can say that I'm really loving all of the reviews for this. If I had more time I would discuss them even more, but unfortunately I'm racing the clock as it is to type this. So I'll save any discussion for next time.

Sorry this next installment is so short. I started a new class this week—that raises my total to 8 classes per day, or a 10 hour workday. Ouch. So this is of course going to be very brief, as all the time I had to type it was around 2 hours.

Unfortunately, you guys probably aren't going to hear from me again for a little over a week. This is because my parents are coming to visit me here in South Korea tomorrow. As a result, I will be unbelievably busy, as well as probably moving up to Seoul for vacation (man, I _so_ need to de-stress). I'll try and see if I can post another installment of this story, even a small one, around Wednesday next week or so. We'll see. This project can probably be done in small chunks.

On to the story...

.

.

.

**TDKR: Rewritten**

**Part III**

.

.

.

Once he had a sizable number of goons, the Joker moved on to the next phase.

They were called "phases," not "steps," because steps implied a rigid gridlock. Gridlocks were plans. And plans were a problem. They created more problems than they solved. Plans, formulas from which there was no deviation, were like a captain ordering his soldiers to walk ever deeper into an impenetrable swamp, never to return. The real world was chaos; there was no use pretending otherwise by sticking to some _plan_.

The Joker had always been like a jester at court. Jesters used to come up with skits to amuse their kings, but that skit was never the whole picture. Instead, their true talents had lain in the ability to improvise, their skills never shining so brightly as when they went on their ultimate _ad lib_. Although they started their shows with a brief plan, they quickly allowed it to devolve into chaos, stirred by their audience's reactions—always ever sensitive to the King, who both employed them and who was ultimately their target in jest. After all, the jester's role was to say what should not and could not be said elsewhere; to give feedback through mocking, ridicule, and mime. In this way they, and they alone, mirrored the true nature of the King.

There was only one problem with this metaphor in Gotham, though. Gotham's King was missing.

The very thought of this made the Joker's empty chest ache, and he was liable to destroy something; small objects, pens, paper, and the like. Once, in a fit, he placed a bullet in his mouth and chewed it until his teeth began to protest soundly. Nobody was there to witness these things, since he had sent all of his goons away to start everything.

In a very non-rigid fashion, the Joker knew what to do. After all, he had done this before. The situation was different but his tactics—change, change, change—were not.

He had to start small and build up. Like arson. A fire from a tiny spark...

First on the list: Theft.

Moving from one job to the next, he successfully orchestrated a series of quick and easy snatches from the mob. They weren't anything big, at first. Just basic necessities. Guns, Ammo, Food, Water, Clothing. He did not have many men yet, so he made sure to keep the designs relatively safe. Later he would improvise and get rid of the more useless ones. As it was, this situation was unlike the last time, when he had a never-ending supply of dimwits ready to sign up, but he could make due. The Joker always made due.

Still, there were a few casualties, including one idiot who ended up shooting himself in the foot. The moron was unable to escape with the rest of them and needed to be put down before blabbing away all their potential secrets to the mob. Without being prompted, one of the other men shot him. The only other witness to this act, aside from the Joker himself, made no protest on the dead man's behalf, and merely nodded sagely.

The Joker found this situation hilarious. But he didn't laugh.

He hadn't laughed, truly laughed, since the escape from Arkham. That was when Bane had announced to the whole world what he had done to the Batman:

"_I have _broken_ the Bat!"_

The men that the Joker had with him were stupid enough that, when he offered that they should take _all _of the money found at these jobs, they accepted with eagerness, and praised him as "the best boss ever" afterwards. He didn't bother telling them that it was only pieces of paper. They would figure it out eventually... if they were the ones to live long enough.

Ten heists in three weeks. The city was gradually devolving, decaying into so many piles of disrepair. With no city workers to clean the streets, trash and filth began to accumulate. The roads, especially, were quickly becoming hazardous. The Joker guessed that they were only a few weeks away from having a major fire—one that possibly would spread far and wide, without a fire department to halt it. He adjusted his mental timetable accordingly.

They moved up to larger thefts. Bigger. More and better guns. Larger stockpiles of food. The Joker's ranks began to swell, as men brought more of their friends in. As soon as he guestimated that he held over one-hundred lives in his hands, he began to weed them out. The stealing missions that they went on began to mysteriously "go wrong." Many did not return. None of those that did return seemed to notice that the Joker had held a sword of Damocles over their heads—nor did they understand the fact that he still held it, teasingly, between his slippery fingers.

By then, he had reached a critical mass. He didn't need to worry about thinning his herd of goons; he still took in more recruits than he did away with. These men were better. Stronger, more experienced. Most were previous asylum inmates; those that weren't, should have been. They followed him with the sheer single-mindedness of ancient pagans, singularly devoted to their painted god. The Joker still talked with them, made friendly chatter, played card games, outlined his latest strategies. In the corners of unused rooms, however, he began to torment them, if he ever caught them alone, and occasionally when he fell into a fit he would personally eliminate one or two where the others could not see.

He instructed all of them to chant and cheer Bane's name, like the rest of the city folk were now forced to do, whenever the masked man stalked by. But, with glee, he noticed how they did so with hollow eyes, even though their chants were no less fervent. The insane had no room for anyone but him—they were his own devotees, and even Bane with all his charisma stood no chance.

He never revealed himself to Bane. He did not go out in daytime any more.

By coincidence, he supposed, neither did the woman.

It was during the night, on the first day of the month, when he was conducting his latest heist, that he met her again. He was observing the whole parade from a nearby rooftop. This was a standard procedure: one of his men would run out in front of a truck making a supply drop from one mobster to the next, a peace offering sent as a part of the deals the mob leaders were making to prepare for war against Bane. The truck would make a glancing blow, which, although not harming the Joker's henchman, would seem to the people driving to be a serious accident.

Occasionally, the men driving the truck would stop and see if the hit man was okay. The Joker found this hilarious; the looks on their faces, as they were cut into pieces, was priceless.

More often, the men just kept driving. When this happened, the Joker noticed, his other henchmen were likely to be even more brutal than otherwise. A small irony that they, too, continued to subconsciously cling to the standard ideas of morality.

In any case, distracted by what they had "done" to the hit man, the men driving would not see the other truck as it rammed into the driver's side, emerging quickly from a side street. Sometimes, they were killed outright; other times, they were killed by the Joker's men, who lay in hiding with everything from pistols to baseball bats.

The rest of the heist would always go smoothly, unless the Joker had a few targets amongst his own men. The goods were loaded up into a

.

.

.

**Author's Note**

Let me know what you think about what has happened so far!

Also, if people want, I'd like to hear opinions on how you would have done the rewrite yourself. What do you want to see in this story? Give me your suggestions and I'll see what I can do. :)

alice chess


End file.
